Democracy in America
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Published in two parts in 1835 and 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is one of the most penetrating examinations of democratic society ever written. Travelling through the United States in the early 1830s with his friend Gustave de Beaumont, the young French aristocrat set out to study the American prison system, but found himself captivated by a far larger question: how equality was transforming the habits, ambitions and political life of an entire nation. With the eye of a traveller and the precision of a political thinker, Tocqueville explores the institutions of the young republic, the vitality of its local communities, the influence of religion and the complex relationship between liberty and the will of the majority. His observations range from the practical workings of government to the private lives and everyday assumptions of ordinary citizens.
Neither an uncritical celebration of America nor a simple warning against democracy, the book is distinguished by its remarkable ability to perceive freedom’s vulnerabilities alongside its promise. Tocqueville feared that equality, for all its emancipatory power, might encourage conformity, weaken independent judgement and leave individuals increasingly dependent on an all-powerful state. His reflections on public opinion, individualism and the tyranny of the majority have proved strikingly durable, extending far beyond the nineteenth-century republic he observed. A cornerstone of political philosophy and social thought, Democracy in America remains an indispensable companion for anyone seeking to understand the possibilities and contradictions of democratic life.
From the book
“I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
On Democracy in America
“Arguably the most perceptive and influential book ever written about American politics and society.”
— Library of America